The patch containing these changes goes live in February. The biggest change is to the Reset, and the first reset moment after the patch is March 1st, when these changes take place.
I mean..that's nice. I can't help but feel this wasn't an awful lot of effort to implement and could've been done a lot sooner. I really hope they start reacting to feedback quicker then they're doing, right now this feels very lackluster and almost the bare minimum they could've done.
The first phase is coming up with the right solution. Often when you land on the right solution, it feels "obvious". Derek's GDC presentation has some great examples of hard problems that look like they had obvious solutions in hindsight.
We actually went through multiple rounds of brainstorming and testing pitches – everything from completely changing the system, to subtly tweaking it to reach our goals.
Once we have a pitch, we model it. We run a simulation and test what the results will be after 1, 2, 3, 6 months, and a year. Does it spread players out more, to improve matchmaking? How much rank inflation does it cause over time? What's the experience like for players at each rank? We have a team of Data Scientists who try and model player behavior to give us as accurate a picture as we can, to help make the right decision.
Once we have a design we are confident in, then it's ready for implementation. Often during the implementation process we identify edge cases or other snags. For example: We can't line a patch up to launch at midnight in all regions and all platforms on March 1st, so we need to have both ranked play systems live in the client, and build a way to transition between them at the exact right moment. The current design requires a significant change to how players earn their monthly ranked rewards, and we added several warnings and UI call-outs to help reduce the chance players miss out on their card back for March. We had to change the victory screen and the Quest Log screen to accommodate the new flow.
But implementation isn't the biggest factor in a system like this. In this case, it was testing. When we create a new card, it's pretty straightforward to make sure that it works. One tester plays the card in a large variety of weird situations and logs bugs related to it. Our automation engineers force it to be played millions of times and check to make sure the servers don't explode. But a system like this presents a more challenging testing requirement. It involves large numbers of players, normal season resets, feb->march season resets, and coordination between developers, testers, and automation engineers to make sure everyone has the tools they need.
I'm glad people are enjoying the changes – please make sure to give us feedback after you play with it!
Great improvement clearly but could have easily come 2 years earlier without any issues. This is so obviously better for everyone that I cannot understand why this has not been done sooner.
This is the kind of information that I think a lot of players would be interested to hear, but won't see because its only in this comment. I wish there was a more reliable means of communicating with the players than Reddit posts because hearing developer insights would likely go a long way towards reducing the number of complaints you hear about the game.
A lot of sites scrape our reddit comments and post them as articles. It's a reasonable way of making sure you see things like interviews and other stuff, without having to follow every place where we communicate.
Ben Brode
yes
Mike Donais
Right, as you expect it is goes by your highest achieved rank.
Ben Brode
The patch containing these changes goes live in February. The biggest change is to the Reset, and the first reset moment after the patch is March 1st, when these changes take place.
Ben Brode
The ranked rewards go by your highest rank, and the reset is based on your ending rank - same as it was before.
Ben Brode
The ranked rewards go by your highest rank, and the reset is based on your ending rank - same as it was before.
Ben Brode
LIES
Ben Brode
The first phase is coming up with the right solution. Often when you land on the right solution, it feels "obvious". Derek's GDC presentation has some great examples of hard problems that look like they had obvious solutions in hindsight.
We actually went through multiple rounds of brainstorming and testing pitches – everything from completely changing the system, to subtly tweaking it to reach our goals.
Once we have a pitch, we model it. We run a simulation and test what the results will be after 1, 2, 3, 6 months, and a year. Does it spread players out more, to improve matchmaking? How much rank inflation does it cause over time? What's the experience like for players at each rank? We have a team of Data Scientists who try and model player behavior to give us as accurate a picture as we can, to help make the right decision.
Once we have a design we are confident in, then it's ready for implementation. Often during the implementation process we identify edge cases or other snags. For example: We can't line a patch up to launch at midnight in all regions and all platforms on March 1st, so we need to have both ranked play systems live in the client, and build a way to transition between them at the exact right moment. The current design requires a significant change to how players earn their monthly ranked rewards, and we added several warnings and UI call-outs to help reduce the chance players miss out on their card back for March. We had to change the victory screen and the Quest Log screen to accommodate the new flow.
But implementation isn't the biggest factor in a system like this. In this case, it was testing. When we create a new card, it's pretty straightforward to make sure that it works. One tester plays the card in a large variety of weird situations and logs bugs related to it. Our automation engineers force it to be played millions of times and check to make sure the servers don't explode. But a system like this presents a more challenging testing requirement. It involves large numbers of players, normal season resets, feb->march season resets, and coordination between developers, testers, and automation engineers to make sure everyone has the tools they need.
I'm glad people are enjoying the changes – please make sure to give us feedback after you play with it!
Ben Brode
Posted about this here, if you're interested in the development process for a feature like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/7sxzp0/designer_insights_upcoming_ranked_play_updates/dt8dlhe/
Ben Brode
A lot of sites scrape our reddit comments and post them as articles. It's a reasonable way of making sure you see things like interviews and other stuff, without having to follow every place where we communicate.
Here's this comment on hearthpwn, already!